i think everything everywhere in the internet will be put to training AI at this point. Lemmy and other FOSS will be used too, but at least our data is public and accessible to everyone equally (including to some FOSS AI that i hope emerges), not a private property of someone.
Don’t forget to unlock the bootloader on products that have an operating system, so that people can also flash a replacement for it. So many Ipads and Iphones being wasted now.
Germany took ~150 years of Lebensreform movements (which itself had Freikörperkultur as one line of thought and action among many) to get there. As the articles mention, things that contributed a lot included the fact that they still had living traditions of public bathing in sparsely populated areas (add Scandinavia and rural areas to the mix), and that Germany was a very industrial and educated country, that had the infrastructure to generate what were essentially academics in academical circles theorizing and practicing all of these ideas first, and there was still a strong memory of pre-industrial life in general (that these movements saw as better in those lines of way of life, to react to the then novelties of industrial and urban living). How would we translate that german social environment to places and societies a lot different ? example, much poorer with less intelligentsia, no prestige or memory of premodern living, multicultural multiethnic societies with low cohesion, with outright hostility to all these nature-weirdos that want veganism, nakedness, primitivism, etc while the current media landscape is dominated by hollywood idolizing private wealth, luxury and puritanism (like the amount of sex in Marvel films, after Iron Man 1).
What kind of task made you use the shell in Linux Mint (and i only know Mint after 2021) ? Was it a common task a regular person would need to do, or was it a geek or pro task that regular people would not even know it exists ? I installed Nvidia drivers with a click-install GUI easier than the windows equivalent, the appstore that is only rivaled by Apple had every debian and flatpak program i searched, and all the configurations i could ever tweak are in the configurations manager (unlike the current Windows mess of control panel and worse control panel).
May i suggest for both of you to try Linux Mint (Regular Edition, XFCE MATE or Cinnamon) ? It is the only linux distro that has never failed me once, after also getting into unfixable messees with majaro, arch, endeavour, and also regular debian and LMDE not even booting up on my PC. It uses the Ubuntu base and several of its programs (like the extensive hardware compatibility and system stuff) but takes away the bad stuff in it (like the SNAPs, that loads of people hate both for not being FOSS and to replace the regular debian and flatpak, and give a worse performance in several cases like Firefox). I also agree every linux distro sans Mint is too rough for now, but Linux Mint is the magnum opus of linux, is already click-click-install, beginner-friendly and stable like rock.
My modded Nintendo 3DS with emulators. It is a heavenly beast that runs every Nintendo game released before the Wii and Switch.
It’s mostly an aesthetic choice, a choice between desktop environments.
Desktop environment (DE) is just the visual bells and whistles that you use to navigate the PC, like that quick animation when you minimize or maximize a program (Apple loves this), a start menu that has cute icons for each program and turns blue when you pass the mouse over it (or a start menu that is just a raw list of program names), etc.
Mint Cinnamon uses a DE that looks like Windows 7 reborn, Mint XFCE uses a DE that looks like Windows XP reborn, and Mint MATE uses a DE that looks like Windows Vista reborn.
People will tell you that these DEs will have a slight difference in consumption of RAM, where the most ‘shiny’ DEs will consume more RAM (XFCE<MATE<Cinnamon) by virtue of having more bells and whistles and some different programs that execute the same function, but the difference is irrelevant in practice (unless you are using a 2gb or less PC, where each 50mb of RAM counts). So it’s mostly what you fancy to look at. I just like the old-school visual of XFCE.
You are still a beginner, and in that case almost everyone rightfully says to go to regular Mint only, instead of LMDE or any other distro. A beginner will not know how to evaluate the situation in case of troubles or follow any complex instruction (like anything involving the terminal that is not completely copy-paste). Mint is fully click-click-install now, something that no other distro has equaled. Linux Mint, regular edition, is widely compatible with all sorts of hardware, that in other distros give black screens or esoteric deep s**t at install or later, which is a show stopper for beginners just making the transition.
I myself am not a beginner anymore, and every other distro (save Mint) has failed me at some point. Debian, LMDE and Sparky Linux have not even booted in one notebook, Bazzite (Fedora) has after a few weeks given me a black screen in a desktop pc with Nvidia that i could not solve, and Arch - Endeavour OS - Manjaro have simply collapsed after a few months (probably by using AUR, which is supposed to be their main advantage, but i could not even discover the source of the problem, in each). Everything was restored in order after a blanck install of Linux Mint XFCE, which is the only distro i use now.
They are very niche for the moment, and yes, they do advertise on Linux related youtube channels, like constantly appearing on The Linux Experiment, which itself is trying to be a more accessible linux and foss news channel avoiding the technobabble and too much details on things, but is accessed mainly by converts (with a bigger sized portion of new and potential converts than the norm for linux channels) so the preaching to the choir also applies. But their marketing is of the form we criticised, dry technical explanations. Let’s hope they increase in size and inspire others to up the stakes (or expand themselves), i think a full desktop SteamOS that companies can make a gaming PC around is also on the horizon, seriously challenging the home consoles.
There are some hardware sellers specialized in Linux, no ? the european Tuxedo Computers, and specially the north american System 76 (who is also the developer of PopOS, therefore the closest Linux equivalent of Apple in having both hard and soft wares). They could be the ones to do it by having an incentive (selling hardware in more scale, and merchandising too, also accepting donations). Honestly, a company that focused on just assembling good enough computers that run a very hands-off but functional linux distro (pretty much Ubuntu KDE with flatpaks and lots of pre-installed programs a la Linux Mint), while having a good enough price and most importantly focusing on the marketing in the forms mentioned, could change the status-quo. I agree Fedora, Red Hat, will be catering to companies on the foreseeable future. Ads on Youtube are far reaching and not expensive, and possible to scale with time.
GNU Linux users are stuck in the early 20th century in marketing strategies, including you. Rational marketing explaining objectively how product P will help its consumers in XYZ is not the mainstream strategy of marketing anymore. It was surpassed by Irrational marketing, where a company will try to associate specific ideas and emotions with its brand and products, like an ad with big cars riding in rough natural landscapes that will show to everyone who is the real man in the block, who has high income, who is the most sexy, most adventurous, who the hot girl will want to date, etc (and NOT an ad that explains how the SUV has 6x6 wheels, can travel 555,8 miles, carry 1,8 metric tons of cargo, with air conditioning, etc, even if those informations are true).
Apple did not really explain what their various models of computers are to its clients, they just made several marketing pieces of content (including public performances by steve jobs) that transmitted the ‘‘vibes’’ of what using them ‘‘feels like’’ (i.e. what image apple wanted to associate itself). Being ‘‘futuristic’’, ‘‘smart’’, ‘‘successful’’, ‘‘luxurious’’, ‘‘easy’’, etc.
They need some actual marketing firm that will do a full psy-ops that manages to associate using linux distros with irrational but desirable traits (ideas, emotions, etc), that common people will identify and start trying to ‘‘Keep up with the Joneses’’ (the joneses being the linux users now). Show using Arch Linux as the knack of genius people that will hack anything they want and earn millions, show using Fedora as the thing of smart successful beautiful rich people, show handsome entrepreneurs doing high middle class work in Mint or Ubuntu, show high score Gamers using RGB PCs with Garuda Linux, etc. That kind of marketing is however generally rejected by Linux proponents.
That is the true beauty of FOSS technology. Even if it fractures into regional forks, Linux code is open and free (as in freedom), so each fork can just copy-paste and compile the changes made in others if they advance the tech forward, no direct cooperation is actually needed (if everyone keeps publishing its works).